Virtual Machine config file is invalid

I got this error when trying to run a Virtual Machine on VMWare Server 1.0.5 under Windows 2003 Server.

The error started after a reboot of the host which  coincided with the drive hosting the Virtual Machine running out of disk space. After clearing up some disk space and trying to start the VM again this error was persistent.

To fix this I deleted the files with .vmem and .vmem.lck file extensions (in this case one of each file).

When I tried to delete the .vmem.lck file the error “Cannot delete file because it’s being used by another person or program”. Even after stopping all the services titled VMWare within the services console I had to End Task a service starting with VMware from within Task Manager (not sure which one but there was only one task with all the services stopped). With the task killed and services stopped Windows allowed the deletion.

I started all the services again and the Virtual Machine started automatically.